Huck wrote:I don't know, if the museum could claim a copyright on a 500 years old design. And actually there are two copies in two different museums.

the design is not the issue, it's the reproduction that may or may not be either copyrighted or submitted to "author rights" (in the european/french acceptance).
"Redesigning" or redrawing the card in most case is not a derivative work from the picture but from the original design, but it may also depends on your local legislation !
I thought at some time to reproduce a deck designed in the XIXth century, but in order to do so I planned to use an old edition now in the public domain as a model.

If you publish your work in the United States, the reproductions of the Rosenwald sheet in books like Kaplan's Encyclopedia would not be considered to be under copyright. This precedent was set by the case Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. in 1999, and has not been challenged since.

Since the Rosenwald sheet is in the public domain, and it is physically also in a US institution (the National Gallery of Art in Washington), then "faithful reproductions" of it are not copyrightable, and can be used for any purpose, including commercial. I assume this would also mean that if you (re)published it anywhere in the world, it would not violate any copyright, since both the object and its reproductions come from the US.

This issue hasn't been tested in any European court, but most institutions and publishers in Europe claim ownership of photographic reproductions of two-dimensional images in their collections (as well as rights over photographs of three-dimensional objects, so that, for instance, you are not allowed to publish a photo of the pyramid at the Louvre that you took unless you first ask for permission of the Louvre). Whether or not these claims would stand up in court I don't know, but I am not afraid to use their images for non-commericial purposes without asking for permission. If they want to find me and ask me to stop, let them do so.

Thank you for the replies, everyone
Good to know the sheet is useable, though I'm not doing this to publish.

Besides all the issues, I had already decided to copy the sheet not verbatim but mirrored. I am doing this on 300 lbs. cold-pressed watercolor paper and then watercolor painting it. I perceive it as a 28-3/4" x 19-5/16" piece of paper with 24 cards on it. (The cards are 3-19/32" x 6-7/16" if anyone is interested.)

The damaged Wheel card will have to be recreated in one of the Queen's spaces, as well as the Fool, but I will copy what's left of the Wheel in situ.

Some other options would be to do those cards separately or start a new sheet entirely for those and the tens ;)